This work is designed to embody the most recent information on the subject of dairy farming. My aim has been to make a practically useful book. With this view, I have treated of the several breeds of stock, the diseases to which they are subject, the established principles of breeding, the feeding and management of milch cows, the raising of calves intended for the dairy, and the culture of grasses and plants to be used as fodder.

For the chapter on the diseases of stock, I am largely indebted to Dr. C. M. Wood, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Veterinary Medicine, and to Dr. Geo. H. Dadd, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, both of the Boston Veterinary Institute. If this chapter contributes anything to promote a more humane and judicious treatment of cattle when suffering from disease, I shall feel amply repaid for the labor bestowed upon the whole work.

The chapter on the Dutch dairy, which I have translated from the German, will be found to be of great practical value, as suggesting much that is applicable to our American dairies. This chapter has never before, to my knowledge, appeared in English.

The full and complete explanation of GuÉnon’s method of judging and selecting milch cows,—a method originally regarded as theoretical, but now generally admitted to be very useful in practice,—I have translated from the last edition of the treatise of M. Magne, a very sensible French writer, who has done good service to the agricultural public by the clearness and simplicity with which he has freed that system from its complicated details.

The work will be found to contain an account of the most enlightened practice in this country, in the statements those actually engaged in dairy farming; the details of the dairy husbandry of Holland, where this branch of industry is made a specialty to greater extent, and is consequently carried to a higher degree of perfection, than in any other part of the world; and the most recent and productive modes of management in English dairy farming, embracing a large amount of practical and scientific information, not hitherto presented to the American public in an available form.

Nothing need be said of the usefulness of a treatise on the dairy. The number of milch cows in the country, forming so large a part of our material wealth, and serving as a basis for the future increase and improvement of every class of neat stock, on which the prosperity of our agriculture mainly depends; the intrinsic value of milk as an article of internal commerce, and as a most healthy and nutritious food; the vast quantity of it made into butter and cheese, and used in every family; the endless details of the management, feeding, and treatment, of dairy stock, and the care and attention requisite to obtain from this branch of farming the highest profit, all concur to make the want of such a treatise, adapted to our climate and circumstances, felt not only by practical farmers, but by a large class of consumers, who can appreciate every improvement which may be made in preparing the products of the dairy for their use.

The writer has had some years of practical experience in the care of a cheese and butter dairy, to which has been added a wide range of observation in some of the best dairy districts of the country; and it is hoped that the work now submitted to the public will meet that degree of favor usually accorded to an earnest effort to do something to advance the cause of agriculture.

DAIRY FARMING